Good Day At The Office

[Fury1630]

Took the company Caterham out for a spin this morning. It's a 2010 reg 1600 if that means anything to anyone, but the interesting thing about it is the gearbox, "Bob" in the office came up with a new transmission type & got the Company the pay for building two prototypes & a Caterham to test / demonstrate it. It's an all mechanical flat-shift, six speed sequential, the car has a clutch to get it moving in first gear, after that you just push or pull the lever, you can use the clutch if you want to make it smoother at low revs, but the harder you accelerate, the smoother it gets. Just plant the throttle & pull the stick at the red line.

It's knocked a second off the 0-60 time.

And it's a straight swap for a type 9, but a lot lighter.

There's no electrics or hydraulics, just purely mechanical.

Bob is a clever man.

[Dick]

Yep that's sounds like a dog box of some sort but the important thing is how much can it take and how much are they.

[Hammy]

Now this does sound interesting....

[DJ.]

Probably the same as my car apart from the box.

Sounds impressive, I take it the mechanism is substantially different to current sequential.

By the way, do they have the old gearbox lying around?

[Fury1630]

Sounds impressive, I take it the mechanism is substantially different to current sequential.

I'm not over familiar with the insides of a gearbox, but I'm led to believe it's a new mechanism - much simpler than a conventional one, there's no synchro, the gears are somehow shaped to make the change happen. Certainly the 3D printed & sheet metal trial boxes in the office look pretty simple.

When I was driving, I could literally slam the lever at each change & the harder the acceleration & the harder the slam, the smoother the change got. It struggled a bit down shifting clutchless - the car shuddered a bit as the gears slammed in, but if you don't like it, you can always use the clutch. They had removed all the springs from the clutch plates & there was no rubber in the drive train. A donut drive in the prop would help.

They are still very much in the development stage, & asked me to drive it to get a kit-car driver's view. They seem to think a productionised box would be significantly cheaper than the £6k the current six speed sequentials are because there's les parts, but that's all pie in the sky at the moment only two prototypes exist, but they are both installed in cars & being used - which is impressive for prototypes.

Potentially you could build a seven with an ecoboost & this box for a similar weight to a BEC.